What's the advantage to getting iceweasel "from the experimental repo using apt-pinning"?

Sonsum wrote:I believe that LMDE is a better solution than a rolling release - due to the better stability. With the right apt-pinning, it can be as up-to-date as you want, yet you don't have to worry about updates borking your machine (as much anyways).

I've been meaning to learn about apt-pinning: what's a howto for newbies? (as in, someone who knows enough about apt-get/aptitude and sources.list to cope with LMDE, but has never apt-pinned)

Suppose that Testing is the default release, but the application in which we're interested exists only in Unstable. In that case, Aptitude will happily install it (and its dependencies) without any particular warning. This is further complicated by the fact that those dependencies, along with any programs you chose by name to install, are "marked" by Apt as OK to upgrade from Unstable. From now on (until your Unstable package moves to Testing), those programs will be updated from Sid as the updates become available.

The critical result of that behavior is that it will behoove you to be aware of what programs have been installed from your secondary repositories, so that you can be alert for subsequent upgrades from that repository which can easily happen without your realization. (Note: The best way I have discovered to check exactly what packages are currently installed from unstable is:

if apt-pinning is a tricky job in proper debian and if misused can cause serious troubles is even more complex in lmde mainly because it already ships a preferences file and tbh in the end of the day it causes more issues than it worth. (1)(1)- let's be clear about this: the preferences file shipped with lmde works and works well in the closed ecosystem of the UP. period. but even there if you decide to compile and/or get "alien" packages (as in from outside the default repos) soon you'll face barriers and errors that are easily solved adjusting the preferences like here

this is a problem when you for example add the experimental repo to lmde; according to this and may i add, my experience with proper debian as well, if/when you add experimental nothing happens (as it shouldn't), in lmde (because of that rule) you get a system upgrade to experimental and most certainly a broken system.

on the other hand the 2 first rules in the preferences file are responsible for some of the mint-specific additions and tweaks (a couple app, fonts configs and rendering); if you just get rid of that preferences file, the first thing (and probably the only really annoying) you'll notice is a poor font rendering, but you are also seeing that is harder and harder to keep the ubuntu-patched libfontconf.